Cops Canvass Report Documents

This is a section of the Cops Canvass Report. See also San Diego County Canvass Procedure

Documents Referenced

The following documents were provided by the Ro V as a response to our request or obtained from other sources. These documents will be referenced in later sections by name. "RoV Procedure Documents" specify procedures used in each election while "RoV Election Documents" are specific to this election.

The casual reader of this report may move directly to Procedure Summary while keeping in mind the fact that these documents and abbreviations are defined here.

• Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines(1) were authored by the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), a committee authorized under the HELP America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, and researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). These guidelines were authored primarily to guide voting machine manufacturers in their design of voting systems.
• Logic & Accuracy Testing Procedure(2) An RoV Procedure Document that specifies how to confirm basic operation of the electronic scanning equipment.
• Ballot Order Procedure(3) An RoV procedure document that specifies how the number of ballots is determined.
• Ballot Order Spreadsheet(4) An RoV Election Document that lists the quantity of ballots ordered for each precinct and supplemental orders. Includes Sequence Number to Precinct Number conversion.
• Ballot Inventory Sheet(5) An RoV Election Document. This is a sample of the document sent to each precinct leader to verify the count of blank ballots received.
• Street Indexes(6) An RoV Election Document that lists voters by address and each is checked off as they vote. About half of our 5% sample were scanned but we discovered they were incomplete as most polling places did not continue to complete these after 6 p.m. on election day.
• Ballot Statements(7) An RoV Election Document. These were initially withheld by the RoV due to legal concerns of showing signatures. (Requested in C00022). These have been scanned by the Registrar with the signatures concealed.
• Collection Center Logs(8) Reports from 80 collection centers were scanned from RoV on 2009-03-23. Each report handles 21 precincts, on the average. No logging of seal conditions or serial numbers.
• Collection Center Seal Report(9) Describes 6 seals that are missing or wrong
• Tally Center Log(10) Use by incoming inspectors at the Tally Center. Describes 99 seals broken or wrong, 6% error rate.
• Security Seal Standards(11) includes ISO/PAS 17712 - Freight container seal standards.
• Batch box label (Used as tracking device when in facility).
• Scanner Tapes for our 5% Sample(12) These pdf files contain three scanner tapes each, and were manually scanned by COPs volunteers.
• Manual Tally Procedure(13) An RoV Procedure Document
• San Diego County Manual Tally Report for 2008-11-04 election(14) This five-page report is extremely deficient compared with the recommendation of the Secretary of State, which would result in about 800 pages. This report includes NO vote totals and only a count of the ballots.
• Audit Log (of central tabulator)(15) An RoV Election Document produced by the GEMS Central Tabulator.
• Canvass Reports(16) Certified results of the RoV for our 5% Sample.
• Precinct Sequence 1563(17) which is one of the few Ballot Statements that reconciled completely. The precinct had no touchscreen ballots. The ballot statement discloses 565 ballots counted and that matches the number of non-provisional signatures (565). However, the scanner tape from the Tally Center says there were only 550 cards cast.

Other Documents and media

• Open Canvass method(18) A method to reduce election processing vulnerability based on scanning all ballots and comparing vote extraction from several competing actors
• Video of the February 5, 2008 Presidential Primary Canvass(19)
• Nov. 21, 2008 Meeting with Deborah Seiler (video)(20) After this initial meeting, the Registrar refused to allow us to record our meetings, and so we discontinued that approach and instead used written requests for information only.
• Secretary of State Top-to-Bottom Review(21)
• All Precincts(22) provides results of our data collection activity for all the precincts in our 5% sample.
• All Races(23) provides a link to a separate page for each race in the election and lists the vote count from each precinct in the 5% sample.
• Kathy Dopp, 'Checking election outcome accuracy Post-election audit sampling' (24) Derives a simple formula to determine the number of precincts that must be sampled to validate election results with known apparent vote counts.
• Potrero Planning Group Recall Vote Count Video, 2007-12-11(25) This is the entire initial vote count performed on December 11, 2007 demonstrating the method of manual tallying used by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters.

Interaction Documents

The following documents record our requests and responses by the Ro V:

• C00014: Letter to Registrar of Voters requesting Statement of Votes Cast, 2008-10-03(26) We requested that the RoV create two copies of the scanner tapes, as specified by law, so that we could start our review of the election right away. They refused, forcing us to wait until the election was certified before we could start to review the scanner tapes.
• C00015: Letter to Secretary of State requesting support of our request to Registrar of Voters requesting Statement of Votes Cast, 2008-10-08(27) We forwarded our letter to the RoV (C00014) to the Secretary of State in an effort to persuade the county to comply with access to the scanner report tapes prior to the end of the election. This request was refused, with the rationale being that state law applies only in the precinct and they are not required to create a second scanner tape prior to election certification.
• C00016: Letter to RoV: Manual Tally Report Questions, 2008-11-20(28) This three-page request was submitted prior to the closing day of the canvass period and pointed out that they were not using the appropriate format for their PEMT report.
• C00016 R: Response by County Counsel regarding Nov. 20 Letter to the RoV, 2008-11-25(29) This response was the least cooperative and would not answer simple questions regarding why ballots were missing in the PEMT report.
• C00017 - Letter to San Diego Registrar of Voters regarding Election Procedures (2008-12-02)(30) This five-page request was submitted on the closing day of the canvass period.
• C00017 R - Response to C00017 by San Diego Registrar of Voters regarding Election Procedures (2008-12-16)(31) Includes Ballot Order Procedure, One Percent Manual Tally Procedure, Collection Center Comments on Carton Seals.
• C00019 - Letter to San Diego Registrar of Voters regarding Election Processing (2009-01-08)(32) This 19-page request was a followup to C00017, and was submitted twice, the second time (C00021) in an abbreviated format to aide in processing.
• C00019 R - Response to C00019 and C00021 by San Diego Registrar of Voters regarding Election Procedures (2009-02-24)(33)
• C00022 - Questions to Registrar of Voters on Nov, 2008 Election (Part 3) (2009-09-01)(34) Request for Ballot Statements, Street Indexes, Question about ballot counts, and Premier contact.
• C00022 R: Response to C00022 by Registrar of Voters (2009-09-09)(35) Answered some questions. Ballot Statements took several weeks to finally get in full, no contact to Premier Election Solutions provided.

Abbreviations and Terminology

If you do not find the definition here, please also see this reference:
http://www.eac.gov/vvsg/g/definitions-of-words-with-special-meanings

• Collection Centers - 80 centers throughout the county where ballots are collected from individual precincts, each averaging 21 precincts.
• CVR - Cast Vote Record - Archival record of all votes produced by a single voter. Cast vote records may be in electronic, paper, or other form. Electronic cast vote records are also called ballot images. In San Diego County, the durable paper ballot is the CVR.
• DRE - Direct Recording Equipment - Voting machines that directly record the vote of the voter without using paper ballots. These machines have superior usability for disabled voters, but are inherently subject to election fraud risks, and therefore are no longer used except for one unit per precinct for use by disabled voters, and their vote is transferred to paper ballots and processed with the rest.
• IVVR - independent voter-verifiable records - all voting systems must include a vote-capture device that uses independent voter-verifiable records (IVVR). For example, durable paper ballots that are scanned represents a ballot that can be easily read by the voter and interpreted by machines.
• PAV - Permanent Absentee Voter - Deprecated. Now "VBM."
• PI - Precinct Inspector - The lead poll worker at each polling place.
• RoV - San Diego County Registrar of Voters
• Seq# - The precinct sequence number, from 0001 to 1650. This number is used internal to the Ro V and relates to one polling place.
• SPUW - Supply Pick-Up Weekend - The weekend prior to election day when supplies are distributed to polling places by having polling place workers pick up their supplies.
• SoS - California Secretary Of State CA - This elected office is responsible for overseeing the elections process.
• Tally Center - The central office of the Ro V where the main task of scanning ballots and compiling the final certified canvass occurs.
• VBM - Vote-by-Mail - Previously called PAV, permanent absentee voters.
• Voter Data File - Information about each registered voter is maintained in a database, including whether the voter has voted, whether they have requested a VBM ballot, their digitized signature, etc.

Next section: Procedure Summary

Notes

1 : https://copswiki.org/Common/VoluntaryVotingSystemGuidelines Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines - were authored by the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), a committee authorized under the HELP America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, and researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). These guidelines were authored primarily to guide voting machine manufacturers in their design of voting systems.

2 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M829 Logic & Accuracy Testing Procedure - An RoV Procedure Document that specifies how to confirm basic operation of the electronic scanning equipment.

3 : https://copswiki.org/w/pub/Common/M717/COP_PRA_Response_Attach_2.pdf Ballot Order Procedure - An RoV procedure document that specifies how the number of ballots is determined.

4 : https://copswiki.org/w/pub/CommonM821/C00019_Response_20.3.3_Ballot_order_and_supplemental_order_for_11-08.xls Ballot Order Spreadsheet - An RoV Election Document that lists the quantity of ballots ordered for each precinct and supplemental orders. Includes Sequence Number to Precinct Number conversion.

5 : https://copswiki.org/w/pub/Common/M717/COP_PRA_Response_Attach_1.pdf Ballot Inventory Sheet - An RoV Election Document. This is a sample of the document sent to each precinct leader to verify the count of blank ballots received.

6 : https://copswiki.org/Cops/StreetRosters Street Indexes - An RoV Election Document that lists voters by address and each is checked off as they vote. About half of our 5% sample were scanned but we discovered they were incomplete as most polling places did not continue to complete these after 6 p.m. on election day.

7 : https://copswiki.org/Cops/BallotStatements Ballot Statements - An RoV Election Document. These were initially withheld by the RoV due to legal concerns of showing signatures. (Requested in C00022). These have been scanned by the Registrar with the signatures concealed.

8 : https://copswiki.org/Cops/CollectionCenterLogs Collection Center Logs - Reports from 80 collection centers were scanned from RoV on 2009-03-23. Each report handles 21 precincts, on the average. No logging of seal conditions or serial numbers.

9 : https://copswiki.org/w/pub/Common/M717/COP_PRA_Response_Attach_4.pdf Collection Center Seal Report - Describes 6 seals that are missing or wrong

10 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M828 Tally Center Log - Use by incoming inspectors at the Tally Center. Describes 99 seals broken or wrong, 6% error rate.

11 : https://copswiki.org/Common/SecuritySealStandards Security Seal Standards - includes ISO/PAS 17712 - Freight container seal standards.

12 : https://copswiki.org/Cops/ScannerTapes Scanner Tapes for our 5% Sample - These pdf files contain three scanner tapes each, and were manually scanned by COPs volunteers.

13 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M830 Manual Tally Procedure - An RoV Procedure Document

14 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M691 San Diego County Manual Tally Report for 2008-11-04 election - This five-page report is extremely deficient compared with the recommendation of the Secretary of State, which would result in about 800 pages. This report includes NO vote totals and only a count of the ballots.

15 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M831 Audit Log (of central tabulator) - An RoV Election Document produced by the GEMS Central Tabulator.

16 : https://copswiki.org/Cops/CanvassReports Canvass Reports - Certified results of the RoV for our 5% Sample.

17 : https://copswiki.org/Cops/PrecinctSeq1563 Precinct Sequence 1563 - which is one of the few Ballot Statements that reconciled completely. The precinct had no touchscreen ballots. The ballot statement discloses 565 ballots counted and that matches the number of non-provisional signatures (565). However, the scanner tape from the Tally Center says there were only 550 cards cast.

18 : https://copswiki.org/Common/OpenCanvass Open Canvass method - A method to reduce election processing vulnerability based on scanning all ballots and comparing vote extraction from several competing actors

19 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M434 Video of the February 5, 2008 Presidential Primary Canvass -

20 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M688 Nov. 21, 2008 Meeting with Deborah Seiler (video) - After this initial meeting, the Registrar refused to allow us to record our meetings, and so we discontinued that approach and instead used written requests for information only.

21 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M860 Secretary of State Top-to-Bottom Review -

22 : https://copswiki.org/Cops/AllPrecincts All Precincts - provides results of our data collection activity for all the precincts in our 5% sample.

23 : https://copswiki.org/Cops/AllRaces All Races - provides a link to a separate page for each race in the election and lists the vote count from each precinct in the 5% sample.

24 : http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf Kathy Dopp, 'Checking election outcome accuracy Post-election audit sampling' - Derives a simple formula to determine the number of precincts that must be sampled to validate election results with known apparent vote counts.

25 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M351 Potrero Planning Group Recall Vote Count Video, 2007-12-11 - This is the entire initial vote count performed on December 11, 2007 demonstrating the method of manual tallying used by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters.

26 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M667 C00014: Letter to Registrar of Voters requesting Statement of Votes Cast, 2008-10-03 - We requested that the RoV create two copies of the scanner tapes, as specified by law, so that we could start our review of the election right away. They refused, forcing us to wait until the election was certified before we could start to review the scanner tapes.

27 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M668 C00015: Letter to Secretary of State requesting support of our request to Registrar of Voters requesting Statement of Votes Cast, 2008-10-08 - We forwarded our letter to the RoV (C00014) to the Secretary of State in an effort to persuade the county to comply with access to the scanner report tapes prior to the end of the election. This request was refused, with the rationale being that state law applies only in the precinct and they are not required to create a second scanner tape prior to election certification.

28 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M691 C00016: Letter to RoV: Manual Tally Report Questions, 2008-11-20 - This three-page request was submitted prior to the closing day of the canvass period and pointed out that they were not using the appropriate format for their PEMT report.

29 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M689 C00016 R: Response by County Counsel regarding Nov. 20 Letter to the RoV, 2008-11-25 - This response was the least cooperative and would not answer simple questions regarding why ballots were missing in the PEMT report.

30 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M716 C00017 - Letter to San Diego Registrar of Voters regarding Election Procedures (2008-12-02) - This five-page request was submitted on the closing day of the canvass period.

31 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M717 C00017 R - Response to C00017 by San Diego Registrar of Voters regarding Election Procedures (2008-12-16) - Includes Ballot Order Procedure, One Percent Manual Tally Procedure, Collection Center Comments on Carton Seals.

32 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M819 C00019 - Letter to San Diego Registrar of Voters regarding Election Processing (2009-01-08) - This 19-page request was a followup to C00017, and was submitted twice, the second time (C00021) in an abbreviated format to aide in processing.

33 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M821 C00019 R - Response to C00019 and C00021 by San Diego Registrar of Voters regarding Election Procedures (2009-02-24) -

34 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M878 C00022 - Questions to Registrar of Voters on Nov, 2008 Election (Part 3) (2009-09-01) - Request for Ballot Statements, Street Indexes, Question about ballot counts, and Premier contact.

35 : https://copswiki.org/Common/M879 C00022 R: Response to C00022 by Registrar of Voters (2009-09-09) - Answered some questions. Ballot Statements took several weeks to finally get in full, no contact to Premier Election Solutions provided.

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